Subject: Re: [svlug] Printing
From: Thomas Davis <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked], [email-masked] (Thomas Davis)
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 1999 11:24:28 -0700

On Tue, 28 Sep 1999, [email-masked] wrote:
>> Sounds like you need to install the TrueType fonts, and disable
>> Times-Roman in the X11 distribution.
>
>Seems like it. I tried other fonts, like chevaraoutline, and those
>came out fine on the screen as well as on paper.

yea, if it's blochy, blocky, or large areas with itty bitty letters, then it's
probably the dbf vs truetype font mappings.

RH6 doesn't ship with any truetype fonts, but has all the tools in place
(mkttfontdir, and ttfont support in xfs).  You only need to do:

a) put the fonts somewhere(in my case, I used  /usr/share/fonts/truetype)
b) create the fonts.dir/fonts.alias file by running mkttfontdir
c) edit /etc/X11/fs/config, adding the truetype font path as the _first_ line
ie:

catalogue =     /usr/share/fonts/truetype,
        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled,
        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled,
        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc,
        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1,
        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo,
        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi,
        /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi

d) goto /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi,and do:
- mkdir old
- mv fonts*  tim* old
- mkfontdir
cd ../100dpi
mkdir old
mv fonts* tim* old
mkfontdir

e) restart xfs/X11

and presto, no more pesky Times-Roman that is blochy.

as for the .ttf files, I can put them up in a .tar.bz2 file on a web site if
there appears enough demand for them (they are easy to find on microsoft's
web/ftp site.. look for:

ariblk.exe
comic.exe
corfonts.exe
georgia.exe
impact.exe
mtcom.exe
newfonts.exe
trebuc.exe
webdings.exe

(these are the Win3.1 files, in self-extracting zip format.)

My favorite site to test this out is www.cnn.com and www.businessweek.com; both
use arial/times roman in a manner that cause block fonts.

RM adds:  Other sources of TrueType typefaces:

       Font Freak - http://www.fontfreak.com/
       1001 Free Fonts - www.1001freefonts.com
       Typesource - http://www.typesource.com/
       Acid Cool - http://www.acidfonts.com/
       Free Fonts - http://www.thefreesite.com/font.htm
       Microsoft Core Fonts - http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/
       Scriptorium - http://www.ragnarokpress.com/scriptorium/webfonts.html
       http://www.steffmann.de/english/

All of these are free-of-charge typefaces, and many would say that you
get what you pay for.  There are for-money collections that are much 
better.  Also, in my own personal opinion, really _good_ PostScript
Type1 typefaces, such as Adobe Garamond, are unsurpassed by any TrueType
typeface.

Michael Torrie's March 2003 tips about making typefaces look good on Linux
(in his case, specifically when using "cxoffice wine" = the Crossover
Office fork of WINE):

   1. Install the Web fonts from Microsoft into X.
   2. Recompile freetype to enable the byte code interpreter.
   3. Copy the freetype library into ~/cxoffice/lib for cxoffice wine to use.
   4. Choose a ttf font for things like the widget default font.  I use
      verdana, as it looks quite good.
   5. Turn on anti-aliasing, either by using KDE and turning on the option,
      or by installing gdkxft from gdkxft.sourceforge.net (which mostly works
      for GNOME applications).
   6. Tune Gdkxft by adding all the TrueType font families to it's list so
      it will anti-alias them for GNOME and GTK apps.
   7. Choose default fonts for Mozilla and Galeon that are TrueType (like
      Times New Roman, Arial, instead of Times and Helvetica).
   8. Edit the font substitutions in /etc/X11/XftConfig so that "Times" and
      "Helvetica" are mapped to Times New Roman and Arial respectively.  This
      makes Web pages look so much better.

   I'm thinking about doing up a HOWTO on this, a little bit later.

   Also, I'm still trying to tweak Mozilla 0.9.9 so it looks good.  The
   short story is that Mozilla now supports TTF rendering of fonts directly
   using freetype, but, since it doesn't use the XFree86 xft mechanism, it
   doesn't have the font substitutions available.  So, some fonts look good
   and anti-aliased, and some do not look so good.  I think there's a hack
   out there to use xft, which will then let me do good substitutions.

Step #1 refers to Microsoft Core Fonts (http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/).
Step #2 violates Apple Computer's patent rights, unless you have a licence.

Torrie posted the HOWTO referred to, at
http://students.cs.byu.edu/~torriem/font/ .